The new laptop is here,
It has fired up with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit, but according to the invoice has a Windows 8 Pro license and system restore included. I think therefore I effectively have a choice of 7, 8.1 or 10.
It seems to me that it might be better to sort the operating system before installing any software - do the pros agree, or doesn't it make any difference. Any thoughts on this or which is best?
On the basis that 7 works better than any other Windows version I have ever used, I am inclined to stick with it, but I suppose it will drop out of support at some point - if that is more than say three years away, it probably doesn't matter.
I also have a paid-for copy of MS Office Professional 2010 on my old laptop that I want to transfer. Anybody had experience of doing this, will the validation register the de-installation or will I have some aggro? It's a 2 PC licence and I already have 2 installations so there isn't a spare one.
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You can safely go ahead with Win 7.
Its support will continue till 2020. After that, if your laptop survives beyond that, Windows 7 will continue to work on that machine.
Unlike a car, a software does not wear out :-)
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>> It seems to me that it might be better to sort the operating system before
>> installing any software - do the pros agree, or doesn't it make any difference. Any
>> thoughts on this or which is best?
I would get the OS sorted with all the latest updates sorted first yes.
>> On the basis that 7 works better than any other Windows version I have ever
>> used, I am inclined to stick with it, but I suppose it will drop out
>> of support at some point - if that is more than say three years away,
>> it probably doesn't matter.
Windows 10 works just as well as 7. Its one of those no-brainers moves, don't get a new laptop and stuff an old OS on it.
>> I also have a paid-for copy of MS Office Professional 2010 on my old laptop
>> that I want to transfer. Anybody had experience of doing this, will the validation register
>> the de-installation or will I have some aggro? It's a 2 PC licence and I
>> already have 2 installations so there isn't a spare one.
stick it on and use your license key. It will work.
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>>stick it on and use your license key. It will work.
That's been my experience too with both 2010 and earlier versions of Office.
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The only minor problem I've had with Windows 10 (it also applied to a friend's system) was, for some unknown reason, having to boot a couple of times rather than once after Windows Updates were installed.
In the case of the friend, he also got a "Critical error" message on the screen, but another Reboot sorted it out.
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I have a vague recollection of seeing a prompt from Office which said something like "Is this licence in use on another machine", and a No response got rid of it. Could be wrong though.
Re the OS, I'm with Zero - go for Win 10, add your favourite virus programme and your Office, and once it's all set up take an image which you can revert to at a later date if necessary.
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I would agree with the others about putting Windows 10 on there, it'll be better IMO.
However, its no big deal; there is no reason at all why you cannot keep Windows 7 on there and then update at any point you wish to in the next year. Without cost or much effort.
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Coincidentally have just been reading this. In brief - techy bloke who is biased says Windows 10 is super duper as long as you've never used Windows 7, which is of course, generally a bit better.
www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/29/windows_10_sysadmin_says_average_joe_will_be_happy/
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>>...as long as you've never used Windows 7>>
The experience is basically the same as with 7 (which I had for five years) other than, for example, the Start Menu setup, inability to pick and choose Updates and the infuriating meddling (which has to be configured out or using a utility such as):
www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/donotspy10.html
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Didn't I read that the free Windows 10 runs out at some point?
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>> Didn't I read that the free Windows 10 runs out at some point?>>
The free offer runs for a year (from July 29th when 10 was officially released).
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Thanks for the advice.
Re the MS Office - is the belief that this will work OK predicated on uninstalling from the old machine first? An overlap might be useful...
Smokie - I like the idea of a clean-ish image with my key software installed. I like the idea of a Windows 7 version and a Windows 10 version even better. I could presumably go back to 7 at any time then.
What's the best way to do this? Use 7's backup and restore/system image to DVDs? And is there a similar function in 10?
I hoping I can make a better job of this than I usually do - the slowing down of Windows computers as they age is most annoying. I always create the recovery media but 2 years later I am reluctant to go through the palaver of re-installing all the updates, software and data.
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I have a feeling that you can now image you C drive in Windows (as of 1`0) but I use Macrium Reflect free version. www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
Yeah you could take images at whatever points you wanted and restore. I always do it at key points when I am rebuilding my system e.g. when doing Windows 7 I took my first image once Windows 7 was loaded and had all the patches on, then another once I 'd installed and configured Office, then after all the apps had been installed.
I now image the C drive regularly as a backup, or a fall-back in case I get a virus or ot breaks. To do this you need a fair bit of space elsewhere, and ideally keep C just for Windows and programme files.
I think you'd find Windows 10 absolutely fine though so no need to consider reverting to 7.
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Having taken on board the recommendation just to go for Windows 10, I have been trying to upgrade but it isn't going well.
I haven't got the little Windows upgrade invitation, so I have twice attempted to upgrade using the Media Creation Tool as per
windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install
but it has failed both times with a black screen, and an error on forced reboot (I left it for hours). I can't keep repeating this as it takes anything up to 12 hours to download on my (not)superfast broadband connection (and when it fails, it puts the PC back in its original state so I have to start again).
I don't have a problem with doing a clean install rather than an upgrade, and as I read it I should be able to do that by downloading an ISO from here (another 10 hours' worth):
www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
Which I have done, and I have just burnt the image disc.
I have read half the internet and the basic position seems to be that unless I have done a free upgrade, I cannot do a clean install by booting from the install disc as it will not validate.
However, if I boot normally into Windows 7 then I can navigate to the setup executable on the disc and run that, to do an upgrade. I can subsequently boot from the disc itself to do a clean install once my Windows 10 upgrade has been successfully installed and validated.
I have just tried to run setup from the DVD, which stops with error 0xC1 and also alleges that there might be something wrong with SPWZENG.DLL.
I think somebody is trying to tell me to stick with Windows 7. It is entirely possible that I have misread or misunderstood something.
I made some discs from the recovery partition before I started all this. Allegedly this includes Windows 8 Pro as well, I can't remember which. Is it worth running the recovery and installing 8, and starting from there?
Last edited by: Manatee on Sun 6 Sep 15 at 12:16
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You should be able to download the ISO and the Media Creation Tool and then make a bootable USB stick to do the upgrade.You can burn the downloaded ISO straight to a DVD. I don't see why you keep downloading the Windows 10 ISO.
I've not run the Media Creation Tool myself as I installed directly from the ISO.
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>> I don't see why you keep downloading the Windows 10 ISO
Thanks Rob. the Media Creation Tool asks you whether you want to do a clean install or an upgrade. I select upgrade, and it sets about downloading for several hours, then installs. When it fails, I end up rebooting to Windows 7 and the only thing sitting in the downloads folder is the tool. I run it again, and it recommences the download...goes on to install, and fails again. I didn't have a choice, that I knew about.
After two goes at this with the same result I downloaded the ISO from techbench. I made a disc image and instead of booting with it attempted to run the setup from file explorer.
That is the story of how I downloaded Windows 10 three times.
I haven't tried with a stick, I haven't one big enough that I can find. I just went for the DVD image. Does that matter?
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It might. There was a issue that I had which seems similar although I can't remember exactly. Using a usb drive made the problem go way.
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You mentioned you had an 8GB USB stick earlier. That should be big enough.
If you created a DVD, have you tried booting off that? You probably need to get to the boot menu on startup to select the DVD/CD drive as the boot drive.
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>> You mentioned you had an 8GB USB stick earlier. That should be big enough.
>>
>> If you created a DVD, have you tried booting off that? You probably need to
>> get to the boot menu on startup to select the DVD/CD drive as the boot
>> drive.
It was Mapmaker who had a 8GB stick.
I haven't tried booting off the DVD. From what I have read you can install that way, but it will not activate unless it has first been installed to a system booted from a qualifying Windows OS.
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I think its a DVD driver issue. Can you burn it to a USB stick instead?
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If he wants to boot off a DVD to do the install, writing the ISO he's downloaded direct to DVD is all that is needed. You'll need CD/DVD authoring software to do this. Do not burn the ISO file to the DVD of course - it's the contents of the ISO you need.
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>> Do not burn the ISO file to the DVD of course - it's the contents of the ISO you need.
Rob, I think I did that right - I did "burn image" using a program called Power2Go ISO Viewer and got essentially an installation disc - The ISO file was IIRC 2.03GB and on the DVD I have 3.8GB being a setup.exe, a few other files and four folders. The disc has been named J_CCSA_X64FRE_EN-US_DV5
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>> Do not burn the ISO file to the DVD of course - it's the contents of the ISO you need.
I'll do a full driver update. I've already updated the BIOS.
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The ISO I downloaded from Microsoft was about 4GB.
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As I understand it you should be able to upgrade your Windows 7 but, as you say, not do a clean install yet.
Manatee, I suspect your Windows 10 image could be corrupt, so to rule that out if you want to send me your address I will send you a copy of the ISO which I've successfully used to 1) initially upgrade my Windows 7 Professional 64 bit and 2) carry out a clean install yesterday (as per another thread). Use the Report Message post to send a mail to the mods...
I should be able to get this in the post tomorrow so you'll have it by Tuesday.
btw I don't think my Windows 10 DVD is bootable but that didn't seem to matter, I guess it booted from the existing C drive...?
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Thanks Smokie, that's kind of you. It generates the same error when I try to run it on my old laptop (I know it wouldn't validate but it should at least launch the setup) so I've left it downloading yet another ISO from techbench on the premise that the one I have might be corrupt. It's wired to the router and going quite well at 200KBps (that's top speed here) so I'll let you you if/when that doesn't work!
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Well it's already copied and waiting to go in an envelope... just say when :-)
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Hmmm. Well the setup file has kicked off and it seems to be doing exactly what the Media Creation Tool did, including taking ages to get past 11% on "checking for updates".
I think the last ISO must have been corrupted because this one reported a much bigger size, although bizarrely the reported used space on the DVD image is similar.
I fairly resigned to it black screening again, but it's running on mains power so I'll just go to bed and leave it if that happens.
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All I can say is the ISO I downloaded from Microsoft's own site was just over 4GB. It allowed a clean install.
Stick with Windows 7 for you I guess.
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>> so I've left it downloading yet another ISO from tech bench
Why techbench???? It's available directly from Microsoft. Note, I've not used the Media Creation Tool. I have just downloaded an ISO from Microsoft. Maybe you are using Microsoft and techbench is an MS site?
Last edited by: rtj70 on Mon 7 Sep 15 at 00:01
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If you use the Windows Media Creation Tool, it offers the choice of updating the OS on the system in use or creating digital media to create an ISO disk or flash equivalent.
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That's what I thought....
Maybe he should stick to W7.
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I cannot for the life of me remember what happened specifically;
But I was trying to upgrade my Father in law's laptop from W7 to W10. For that one machine I was trying to use a DVD and no, I don't remember why.
It just repeatedly dicked around including crashing, restarting and simply hanging and since everything I tried failed, I gave up in disgust
When I returned to it a couple of days later, this time with a USB stick in my hand burned from the same ISO as the DVD, it worked with no issue at all. It having worked, I wasn't particularly interested in why it had previously failed - however I did read a note which I can no longer find telling me it was something to do with the DVD drivers conflicting with W10 - something to do with them being non-standard, rare, no longer current and not verified by Microsoft. Or some combination of that.
Naff all help, I know, I would have paid more attention had I known it was going to matter. But if it fails again I do recommend trying the USB route.
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Yes Rob it's a Microsoft site. The only reason not to use the Media Creation Tool to upgrade was that it either deletes or at least hides the ISO when it fails.
It's installing again now from a DVD. If it fails again I'll try a stick.
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The odyssey begins. It's worked.
Thanks to all who helped.
What I failed to twig, I think, was that I could have used the Media Creation Tool to get the ISO rather than to upgrade automatically (actually, once you have kicked off the install disc it looks just the same).
The option to create media is there (the name is a give-away), but was couched oddly, something like "if you want to create media to install on a different PC...". Well I didn't. I wanted to put it on the one I was using. I considered using the old laptop to do it but that made no sense to me either - if I couldn't make one that would work on the new laptop, why would it work if I made it on the old one? Of course I could have made one on either, and it should have worked.
I suspect what MS really mean is "if you are upgrading this PC, just use the upgrade option, otherwise you will have to make some media to use on the one you want to upgrade". The usual human factors problem. I am too literal minded I think.
Now to figure out how best to use it. One thing that seems new is that there is a screen full of options as to what to run in the background, all default to 'yes'. I have turned them all off, on the grounds that it must chuck them all into the start up box and that is probably why some people are complaining about slow boot up.
I think we should have a "How to use W10 tips" thread. When I have some tips I might start it is nobody else does.
I'll defer the decision on the clean install until I have worked out how not to lose, or how to replace, the odd pre-installed app that is actually useful. More anon, no doubt.
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 7 Sep 15 at 09:13
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>> Windows 10 works just as well as 7. Its one of those no-brainers moves,
>> don't get a new laptop and stuff an old OS on it.
No it doesn't.
I have Windows 10 on a Surface Pro 3 (something that Microsoft make themselves...) and it has the following problems that Windows 8.1 doesn't:
* Hyper-V won't enable (known issue apparently).
* Appalling battery life.
* Connected standby doesn't work any more.
* Randomly switches on and drains battery (caused by the built in card reader).
* Not touch friendly
* Edge browser slow
* WiFi slows down over the course of time until you reboot the computer.
* There's a three second delay before you can enter your password when logging in.
This is a clean install, there's no excuse and it was IMHO rushed out before it was finished. Though I suspect it demonstrates the perfect reason not to do design by committee.
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They are not faults, they're features
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Having used it for a few weeks now I quite like it.
As an upgrade from W8, its a huge benefit.
As an upgrade from W7, it's ok.
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I am spending a lot of time sorting out the usability, e.g.
- the regional/language settings did not carry over properly. I have had to go through them to get UK date and currency formats (it took me a while to figure out on the desktop why my invoices were coming out with dollar signs on Quickbooks). I have downloaded the UK English pack which was not in the ISO.
- I have noticed wifi speed issues (it starts off OK but appears to slow down or disconnect sometimes). In fact I reverted my old laptop a couple of weeks ago because it lost sight of its own wireless card! I have now got it back on the old laptop, but both that and the new one have dropped the connection for no apparent reason. I am hoping I have cured this as follows -
- open network and sharing centre
- click on the wireless connection
- Properties (bottom left of the dialogue, not the wireless properties button above it)
- Configure
- Power Management
Uncheck "allow the computer to turn off the device to save power"
- Control Panel is still there with its old appearance, usually behind some advanced properties links in the new "settings" which mostly gets in the way. Oddly once you have drilled down into CP via settings, there seems to be no way back without starting again. I have "pinned to start" the control panel shortcut (found under "All Apps" under Windows System along with one for a command prompt) so I mostly go direct to that rather than Settings.
- It keeps trying to trap me into making my MS password my account password. This is b***** annoying as my MS password is a serious one that's hard to type and I don't want to use it for what I regard as a screen lock password - plus we use the same one on all our PCs. Also I have always regarded the account password as insecure, and I do not want to use the password to my mail account and OneDrive files for this.
I have now uninstalled Office 2010 from the old laptop and put it on the new, and it worked OK. I have put Libreoffice on the old one which isn't great for word documents with comments or spreadsheets with macros/buttons, but it will do in extremis.
Apart from the obfuscation introduced by the new jargon, and this password thing, it seems usable, but I can't say it's an advance on Windows 7. The appearance is definitely worse to my eye - I actually think the shading in 7 helped with usability and it certainly looked better than the tiles that basically just take a lot of room up.
Windows Media Player is still there. Presumably because the program was already installed, and it would disappear on a clean install.
The only two things flagged as incompatible that haven't worked are the Dolby audio driver (I wouldn't have known, it still makes noises) and Seagate Dashboard (not required on voyage).
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 9 Sep 15 at 12:51
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Groan - new PC setup - movilogo
